


Professor Without Friends

by Yitzock



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Female Friendship, Friendship, Gen, Loneliness, mean colleagues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:20:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yitzock/pseuds/Yitzock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erin Gilbert's colleagues at the university don't want to have much to do with her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Professor Without Friends

If you were to ask any of them what they thought of her, they would all say that she is a respected professor, because they all knew she was good at what she did. But that did not mean that they liked her. Quite the contrary. It was not always that way. In the beginning, when she was just starting, there was little they knew about Erin Gilbert other than that she was a good professor. She did not appear particularly unusual. It was not until they began speaking with her more that they knew they did not want to be around her very much.

When they got past the boring work-related questions, the topic of her other interests inevitably came up. Eventually everyone had heard about a fascinating book about ghosts that Erin happened to be reading. If asked what put them off about this, they could not pinpoint what it was exactly. Some of them said it was simply weird to be into ghosts or to be interested in ghosts with such enthusiasm. Some thought her childish or that this somehow showed a lack of intelligence on her part.

But this was all while she was a good professor who nevertheless churned out good physics research and who was well-liked by her students.

Even though her colleagues may not have been sure why they did not like Erin Gilbert, Erin Gilbert knew how she felt about them avoiding her. She pretended not to notice it, but she could see their uncomfortable glances whenever she would read a book on the paranormal during her lunch break. And so she became the best professor who had no friends.

Sometimes she thought they were actually starting to like her – sometimes they would actually talk to her about things that were not work-related. But she noticed they always cut off the conversation before Erin could get too deeply into things that related to what she thought. It was as if the conversations were only for the other person’s’ benefit and not hers, or that they wanted to be able to talk to her, but not too much lest she started talking about her other interests.

And so she stopped bringing books to read over lunch, leaving them at home for what free time she had. They were just hobbies, anyway.

And so when she was fired from working at the university, she made excuses because she did not want anyone to know that her freakish little hobby – or at least what they would have thought of as her freakish little hobby – had once been more than just a reading hobby, even though she knew they might figure out that she was not really just moving offices. She did not want them to know that she had taken it seriously and that that was why she could no longer teach at the university.

When she started seeing Abby every day again, she was reminded why they had become friends in the first place and realized just how lonely it had felt not to have her to talk to about things she cared about.

“Hey,” Abby said one day at lunch as she saw what Erin was reading. “Is that the new book on crop circles?”

Erin looked up excitedly from the page. “Yeah!” she said. “Listen to this…”

As they spoke happily over the book, sharing their strange interests, Erin wished she had never left such a good friend behind.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw a post on Tumblr (unfortunately I don't know whose post it was) by someone commenting on how nobody at the university seems to care much about Erin being fired or defend her or ask why as she says she's just moving offices.


End file.
